


adam parrish and ronan lynch are not made for each other

by elliptical



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Loves Ronan Lynch, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Exploration of Canon Dynamic, Internalized Homophobia, Love, Love is a Choice, M/M, Poetry, Relationship Study, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Suicidal Thoughts, building what you need with who you want, mind the homophobia / suicidal thoughts tags though they're there as trigger warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 13:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20706890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: they aren’t perfect halves of a wholethey aren’t interlocking puzzle piecesthey aren’t a perfect chord reverberating through a dumbstruck roomthey aren’t twin stars caught in each other’s gravitythey aren’t a universal inevitabilitythey aren’t immutable laws of physicsthey aren’t soul mates-adam parrish and ronan lynch are a choice, a commitment, a protesta middle finger raised against an unloving universea contemptuous laugh, a baring of teethfuck you.  if love isn’t real, we make our own.





	adam parrish and ronan lynch are not made for each other

they aren’t perfect halves of a whole  
they aren’t interlocking puzzle pieces  
they aren’t a perfect chord reverberating through a dumbstruck room  
they aren’t twin stars caught in each other’s gravity  
they aren’t a universal inevitability  
they aren’t immutable laws of physics  
they aren’t soul mates

-

adam parrish and ronan lynch are a choice, a commitment, a protest  
a middle finger raised against an unloving universe  
a contemptuous laugh, a baring of teeth  
_fuck you. if love isn’t real, we make our own._

-

in the venn diagram of their magician-dreamer hearts  
the overlapping pieces bleed onto each other, strike flint  
spark, threaten injury, threaten dissolution  
here, between them:  
rage, trauma, grief, pain  
injustice  
hate of others, hate of self  
emptiness, fullness  
too much, too little  
no words, no breath  
a venn diagram’s overlap is not a timeline’s inevitability  
it’s just meta analysis, subtext, context, dissection, interpretation  
the messy parts of them reflect back mirrored  
and the black damnation of their black emotions and their black hearts  
could strangle the other whole

-

_“are you happy now, adam? is this what you wanted?”_

-

here is the truth:  
an overlapping diagram means nothing  
if nothing shared builds a foundation  
strike a match, burn the page  
start the story over.

-

adam parrish.  
a magician, a miracle  
an identity built from choice and sacrifice and suffering  
a steel-sharpened inside  
a refusal to feel  
lest he recognize the clawing in his gut.  
a hungry boy ignorant of what he’s starving for  
a scientist picking apart the pieces of the broken world  
a feral animal driven by instinct to adapt, overcome, survive  
to thrive  
at any _fucking_ cost.

-

ronan lynch.  
a dreamer, the damned  
an abyss of isolation  
a yearning and absence  
a bone deep rainy day melancholy gray ache for home  
for a family crumbled to ash  
a sharpening, a rage, a manic itch below skin  
a scream locked behind grimaces of too many teeth  
bloody knuckles and broken bottles and slurred words  
and praying, god, please,  
let me die. let me die.

-

ronan kept his secret from himself  
when he looked at adam  
and his lovely, work-roughened hands  
and his knuckles and his veins and his freckles  
the _please_ was not begging for blessing  
it was a cry for mercy.

-

let’s scoop each boy from the narrative  
and plop them down untethered in an empty room  
contextless, friendless, nothing between them  
but their ugly, broken hearts  
ronan, understanding love and burying it like a body under every harm he could self-inflict  
adam, understanding nothing but the anger and the tiredness and the step-by-step endless isolated trudge toward escape  
sit them in a room, make them speak, make them see the other laid open  
you think they save each other?  
you think this is love?

-

no.  
sometimes we have to become the person we’ll be  
or stop being the person we are  
before our edges won’t scrape others raw  
sometimes you become a better version of yourself  
(and wreck your loved ones on the way)  
and it’s you who did the healing  
you were not saved.

-

adam and ronan are not soul mates  
and they aren’t a happy accident, a coincidence skipping to happily ever after  
they’re a too-human mess of blunders and lessons and growth and change  
and yearning and hurting and hoping and praying  
they are a tentative question, stolen smiles  
a loosening in the chest, an overdue exhale, surprised laughter on the air  
elbows in ribs, arms over shoulders, thrill of teenage stupidity  
traded insults, sharpened barbs, snapping irritation  
an overturned shopping cart with spinning wheels and two dazed, laughing, bruised, idiot kids tangled on the asphalt  
scraped and bloody and alive and electric  
and the overlap of their venn diagram has something in it now  
that isn’t quite words.

-

it’s called a foundation.

-

that’s how you build your heart, when you’re human  
you don’t buy up a shiny empty skeletal new house on a shiny plot of land in a shiny neighborhood  
with no chips or flaws or cracks  
you glean in the woods until you find a clearing with soil soft enough to put down roots  
dig a burrow  
lay to rest  
you tell the ones you love,  
“here. put yours here too. tangle them with mine.  
we’ll share the soil and the sun and the rain  
and whatever grows here  
we’ll have built together.”  
and the loved ones say, okay, and that’s how your heart is shaped  
a tangle of intertwined care  
support, trust  
a strange constellation.

-

adam parrish and ronan lynch are not made for each other  
they’re differently-shaped blades, imperfectly matched parts  
and if the walls of what they’re building start to crumble from the friction, the anger, the fear  
the parts of them that will never naturally sing in harmony, a discordant screech of piano keys  
if, then, they patch the cracks with mud and stone and mortar  
embraces and confessions and conversations and building, always building, always sealing the fragile breaks in their foundation to keep it strong and whole  
that’s not fate  
that’s choice.  
love is what you build. love is how you build it. love is facing the broken pieces together and creating something new, dynamic, better than the original  
love is a choice.

-

adam parrish and ronan lynch might not choose to love each other  
in a different timeline, different circumstances, different sharpness of selves  
but that’s the beauty  
that’s why it matters  
nothing holds them here except the knowledge that here is where they want to be  
with what they’ve built, the home they’ve made  
because their broken imperfect shitty incomprehensible hearts don’t create a whole human when put together  
but what they’ve built creates a home.

-

adam and ronan are not soul mates, other halves, missing pieces  
they’re not a universal constant, an inevitable collision  
they’re a quiet care, a mutual understanding, a fulfilled quest for uncomplicated happiness  
they’re just love. that’s all. their love is a choice, and it’s one they keep making, day by day, because they always want to rest entwined in the shelter they’ve created  
adam and ronan are _not_ soul mates.  
_they’re better._

**Author's Note:**

> [cross posted from my tumblr](https://bipolarronanlynchevangelist.tumblr.com/post/187832231379/adam-parrish-and-ronan-lynch-are-not-made-for-each)
> 
> i was thinking about how the idea that adam and ronan are fated soul mates sort of takes away the things i love most about the relationship  
and as i tried to articulate it this happened  
this is how i feel about all the core trc relationships, platonic or romantic, but i had to do adam and ronan specifically because there's a lot in my heart i had to put down
> 
> anyway. thanks for reading


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